It tickled him; around the world with George Hoyt Allen

Introduction

I. HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S ... 9

II. SEVEN HOURS IN HAWAII ... 17

III. A VOYAGE AT SEA 22

IV. IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO . . 28 V. A RICKSHAW RIDE 41

VI. JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW . 46

VII. HOW THE PARvSON'S PRAYER AND SOUP

GOT MIXED— ALMOST . . . ... 55

VIII. BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME

CANTON 61

IX. OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE

PHILIPPINES 70

X. THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND CHI- NESE ART ....... 76

XI. IN BURMAH 82

XII. A HOT TIME IN INDIA .... 94

XIII. HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO

ANSWER PRAYER ...... 98

XIV. A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW . 108

XV. A PEEP AT EGYPT 116

XVI. THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL

GUTDE .126

XVII. FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO . 138

XVIII. A LETTER THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF 146

Introduction

Gentle, or savage reader, as the case may be, you who pick up this book, if there's a doubt in your mind as to whether it's full of hot stuff or not, forget it. You can dip into it anywhere and be warmed, and clothed and fed; edified, nourished, and built up. I ought to know, I wrote it.

But I wouldn't ask you to take my unsupported word in this matter. Bless you, no. Having worked off more than fifty of the years allotted to me and in that time bumped up against a good share of the billion and a quarter gentle and savage critter, called man, who infest this globe, I know just what a suspicious lot you are, and, instead of swallowing that statement, bait, hook and sinker, as you should do without question, you'll go swimming around looking at it out of Missouri eyes and saying "show us." Say, why can't you take what's set before you for once in your life and ask no questions for conscience sake? I once knew a fellow who made a fortune by just taking 'a chance.

In support of my bold assertion as to the quality of the stuff herein set forth, and to allay your suspicions I have prepared for you Chapter I, telling how I met LaFollette's.

The Author.

HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S

I'm just a plain, unassuming, human ant, trying to support a family by minding my own business in an humble way, keeping out from under foot, if may be, so as not to get tramped into the ground by the Special Interests.

I got mad at the Tariff Bill, Bill Taft and his crowd foisted on to us vermin last year, and spoke my mind about it.

Yes, sir; I just up and wrote Mr. Taft an open letter and told him if I'd known that the Republican party was going to hand us out such a rotten deal I'd never have voted for him. Got it up in booklet shape, nifty style, full of pictures, and called it "I Am Reminded."

Say, Mr. Taft never answered it. Why! he just ignored it! No sir, he never peeped, leastways not to me. The only balm to my wounded feelings at receiving no acknowledgment from Mr. Taft, in answer to my letter to him (I can't think of anything more annoying than not to have your letters answered) was the stack I got from other people. Yes sir, total strangers wrote me in answer to my letter to Mr. Taft. While my letter wasn't written to them they answered it anyway.

Mr. Bryan (William Jennings) wrote to me. He joshed me. Said as bright a man as I was (seemingly) ought to have known better than to be taken in by those Republican promises to reduce the tariff. I'd felt all cut up over Mr. Bryan's letter if he hadn't given the booklet such a send off in his Commoner.

A lot of United States Senators wrote to me, too. They were feeling a little lonesome anyway, I guess. Some of them had been read out of their party, so, while they were lonesomely rubbering around to see where they were at they took the opportunity to commend me for that letter of mine to Mr. Taft.

I was in Washington last December. I looked up the address of the Senator who had bubbled the best in writing me, and dropped him a letter. Told him I was in Washington for a few days and that if he wasn't too busy I'd be pleased to call on him, if he would drop me a line telling me when it would be convenient to see me. I'd liked to have called on Mr. Taft but seeing he hadn't answered my letter I felt a little hesitancy about trying to make a date with him. That Senator didn't write to me. No sir, he telephoned me. Asked me how long I was going to be in Washington. Said he was tied up till two o'clock the next day but that he would call on me, at the club, where I was stopping, at 2:30. I was on hand the next day at 2:30 and so was the Senator. In the course of our conversation he asked me if I had ever met Senator LaFollette. I told him I hadn't. He turned to the telephone, looked up a number, got connected and said, "Is this you Senator? Will you be there for an hour? I've got a man here I want to bring around to call on you."

He hung up the receiver and said, "Let's go and call on Senator LaFollette, Mr. Allen."

We went and called on Senator LaFollette. Found him in his private room at the Capitol. We got at him by a private door. The Senator's ante-room was filled with a lot of fellows who all looked as if they wanted something. There was an old ex-soldier with an empty sleeve and another fellow who looked as if he could run a post-office — oh, there was an assorted bunch waiting to see Senator LaFollette. My Senator friend said: "Senator, I want you to meet my friend Mr. Allen of Clinton, N. Y."

I was mightily impressed with Senator LaFollette. He struck me as a human dynamo, radiating energy in talk, and look, and gesture. A man who would drive things to the center and hold 'em there. "Senator," my friend said, "have you seen Mr. Allen's booklet / Am Reminded?" The Senator said he hadn't. I had one with me and handed him a copy. He turned the pages,

• HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S

looked at the pictures, smiled, caught a phrase here and there and smiled again. " Mr. Allen tells me, Senator, " my friend said, "that he is going around the world next year. You ought to make a deal with him to write some articles for that magazine of yours. Mr. Allen," he said, "I'm going to my rooms here in the Capitol, in the bureau of Indian affairs. After you get through visiting with Senator LaFollette, come around and see me."

I spent an hour with Senator LaFollette. A more charming man I never m p t. N Q ver before in one short hour did I get so well acquainted with a man. We thought along the same lines. I told him some of the things I had done in my career as a business man. He told me of some of the things he had done and what he hoped to do. "Mr. Allen," he said, "I am aiming to make a popular magazine of LaFollette' s. I recognize it needs strengthening in certain lines. I won't say it's heavy reading, but there's a good deal of preaching in it. I've felt that some matter in a lighter vein would help to drive the truths home that we are trying to put up to the people. Write us a page, or half a page, on anything that strikes your fancy, when you happen to have an inspiration Also write my publishers at Madison a tentative proposition which may lead up to an arrangement with you to contribute regtuar' \ for us on your proposed trip around the world next year. It's nearing Christmas. I'm going to Madison for the holiday season. I'll take the matter up with them, when I get home, and my "publishers and editor, and I will thresh the proposition over."

I didn't write that page or half a page the Senator suggested. Didn't have an "inspiration." Inspirations are elusive ducks and I really had other things to do. I'm a business man and not a magazine writer. But between that time and the following February I did strike up a correspondence with LaFollette 's and in some joshing sort of letters, back and forth, got prettv well acquainted with the managing editor and business manager. It resulted in a cordial invitation to drop out there and see them.

I dropped. Blew into Madison one February day. Editor MacKenzie was in Washington with Senator LaFollette for a two weeks' holiday. They wired him — "Allen is in town; you ought to be here." In a couple of hours this answer came back from MacKenzie— " Leave for Madison this afternoon, hold Allen."

Say! it didn't take a log chain to "hold Allen." My oh! but that LaFollette's crowd are a nice lot of boys. Pending the couple of days it took MacKenzie to get to Madison (there was a wreck on the road and he was delayed) they made things so pleasant for me I'd like to have lived there always. Met more good fellows, from the Governor 01 Wisconsin down, than I ever dreamed a town the size of Madison could hold. MacKenzie finally blew in, in a breezy way, with some facetious remarks about railroads that couldn't keep their cars on the tracks. We all got together and had a feast of reason and flow of soul which resulted in an agreement that I should hand LaFollette's some of my "inimitable stuff" on my trip around the world this year.

When it came to the question of my remuneration for pushing my pencil to help popularize LaFollette's Magazine, I didn't want them to think that I was a short skate so I opined that $5,000.00 would be about right. That's a round number — write 's easy. Four thousand looks funny and 6,000 or 7,000 looks odd. So I said, "Suppose we make it five?"

"Allen" they said, "we believe you'll prove a find. We'll go you," and we got together on that basis. After everything was all signed and sealed and agreed to, the whole business staff and managers met in MacKenzie 's sanctum and we had a bully time. I told them of experiences I'd picked up along life's highway which seemed to interest them.

Mr. Rogers, Senator LaFollette's law partner and Vice President of the LaFollette's Publishing Company, turned to Mac- Kenzie and said, "Mack, those stories Mr. Allen has told us are mighty interesting. Use some of them in the issue of LaFollette's in which we introduce Mr. Allen to our readers."

HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S

"Sure thing," Mr. MacKenzie said. "Push your pencil, Mr" Allen, on your way back east, giving us a synopsis of your career and I'll use it to build an editorial to introduce you to our readers."

In Europe, Asia, Africa or the islands of the sea I've never met a better lot of boys than the LaFollette's crowd. The next day I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and glowing with the warmth of their appreciation for me, having a few hours on my hands, I did what MacKenzie asked me to. Yes, sir; I sat down and coughed up the high lights in my career, from the time I was a kid of eight years old right down to the minute and mailed the stuff to LaFollette's.

It tickled them so much that they published it entire, just as I'd written it, and preceded it in their March Sth issue with this editorial :

Not long ago we got hold of a little booklet written by George Hoyt Allen. It was called J am Reminded. We liked it. We told Mr. Allen so. Result - he sent us more of his works, said works being stories of his travels in foreign lands.

Mr Allen, we discovered, is a good story-teller. He is a keen observer. Few things escape him. He manages to extract a lot of fun out of everything that happens. His philosophy of life is of the wholesome, cheerful kind. It is contagious. Also he has a sense of humor. He is the sort of a man who can laugh when things go wrong, and he can make you laugh with him.

Later we got acquainted with Mr. Allen. We liked him even more than we liked his sketches We were impressed with his originality and resourcefulness. We were delighted with his quaint humor. We were charmed by his stories.

He said he was planning to make another tour of the world — his fifth — in the interest of his business, during the coming summer-

An idea struck us. Why not have Mr. Allen write some stories about his next trip for LaFollette's. Here was a "good thing." Why not pass it along to our readers?

Mr. Allen (as he himself admits) is not a "literary cuss." He is a business man. His mission in life is to convince 80,000,000 people that they simply can't get along without his goods. He took to traveling and to writing primarily for the purpose of getting said people interested in said goods. But the idea worked. It worked because the originator of it understood human nature. He told people things they liked to hear about, in a captivating way We think most folks like stories of travel. Not the guide-book variety, but the kind that have to do with people — real, live human beings — and with adventures that befall the traveler. Isn't it just that common interest in life outside our own ken that makes us enjoy our Marco Polos and our African huntsmen and our Arctic explorers and our "travelouge" artists?

Negotiations were forthwith begun. We convinced Mr. Allen that he would reach an appreciative audience through LaFollette's. We likewise convinced him that our offer was in the nature of a very profitable "side line" to carry on his journey. He accepted it.

During the coming year, therefore, a new feature will be added to LaFollette's. George Hoyt Allen will write a series of sketches, in his own unique and entertaining style, about his travels among the people of the Orient. We hope our family of readers will enjoy them. We think you will. We shouldn't give them to you if we didn't.

We asked Mr. Allen to send us the story of his career so we could introduce him properly to our readers. He replied in so characteristic a vein that we have decided to print his letter. Read what he says about himself and see if you don't think this man will have some interesting stories to tell after he gets started on his journey. — Editor's Note.

They wanted my picture to put on the front cover of that issue too. There's some class to the boys who occupy that space. Roosevelt, Taft, Pinchot and that bunch. So I sent them the cockiest photograph I had of myself. The one I thought looked the most like an author (if I don't look like an eminent duck it isn't because I didn't try to look like one in that picture) and they put me there pretty nearly as big as life and just as cocky. On the next page is a reproduction of that front cover. I had the cut made necessarily for publication right there and as a guarantee of good faith. When I saw that issue of LaFollette's I said, "Gee! am I getting famous?" I want to call your particular attention to the fact that they dubbed me a "humorist" along with the other names they called me on that cover.

ollettes

Weekly Magazine

"YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH ASD THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE

"v6LVlT,"N0.S." "" SiAKSOK, Wi«X)XSLS'. -v.m-j-v. :..

GEORGE HOYT ALLEN

Manufacturer, Importer, Traveler, Humorist, Writer, Who Will Entertain the Readers of La Follette During the Coming Year 'With a Series of Stories About his Trip Around the World

You'll find it in the small type under the " George Hoyt Allen.' '

I have an object in calling your attention to that word "humorist."

At any time in your perusal of these pages when you're in doubt on this point you can turn back to page 15 and reassure yourself.

Well, there it was and I had to stand for it. Whether a man is a humorist or not is largely a case of imagination anyway. Years ago Eph Spinks went all the way from a little town in New Hampshire to Boston to hear Mark Twain lecture. By mistake he strayed into a hall where a Harvard professor was lecturing on astronomy, so he didn't hear Mark lecture at all but thought he did. When he got back to his native town he met his friend Josh White.

Josh said, "So ye've been daown to Boston, Eph, to hear Twain lecture, have ye?"

"Yep" Eph said.

"Did ye hear him?"

"Yep."

" Wor he funny?"

"Wall, yes, he wor funny but he warn't so gosh darn funny."

In the following chapters of this book will be set forth the sketches I wrote for LaFollette's on my business trip around the world, together with notes and emendations and some other letters.